


puppet and puppetmaster

by orphan_account



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series)
Genre: I have feelings about video game characters, Introspection, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-31
Updated: 2019-07-31
Packaged: 2020-07-28 04:31:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20058058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Red knows his life is not his own.





	puppet and puppetmaster

**Author's Note:**

> This idea has probably been done a dozen times by now but iiii dont care! also this didnt have a beta and i wrote it in twenty minutes.
> 
> me? making a children's game edgy? its more likely than you think

Red knows his life is not his own.

It’s a strange thing to know, to realize. That you are not the one in control of the way your life will go. That every choice you make, every action you perform, someone else is doing it for you. Most people will never experience it in their life.

He can’t remember what his life was like before. He knows he must have had one- suddenly popping into existence at age eleven doesn’t seem entirely plausible. But- then again- neither does being forcibly controlled by another. A strange thing, his life is.

But he does know. He knows he had friends, a family, he knows he had a life. He knows he lived somewhere other than this little town, and he knows this woman is not his mother. But she smiles cheerfully and bids him good morning and talks about a father that isn’t there. And he does feel a bit bad for her, because she’s as much caught up in this as he is. 

He can’t remember who he was before he lost control. He wonders if anyone there misses him.

He knows the story by now. He knows the way it will go. 

He wakes up in his room. He goes, gets a Pokemon from the professor. It’s different each time. Sometimes it’s the one he wants, but rarely. Then he goes off, and he follows the path through the region. He beats the gyms. Sometimes he gets his ass kicked, and he goes and trains some more, then he continues on. He stopped getting attached to whatever Pokemon he caught ages ago. He knows they won’t last.

He becomes the champion. Every child’s dream. But he can’t be happy, he can’t feel a sense of accomplishment. Because he’s been the champion countless times before now. Because he wasn’t the one that got there.

He stands in the Champion’s hall, staring at nothing, waiting to wake up in his bedroom.

Then he sneezes. 

And it’s the most startling thing he can remember being privy to, because in all these countless cycles, he’s never done anything like that. He’s never needed to eat, needed to stop and rest, never gotten hurt. He’s never blinked. But now he’s just sneezed, and he can feel his chest rising and falling, and it’s so overwhelming he nearly falls over. But that just makes him  _ more _ overwhelmed, because he hasn’t even lost his balance in recent memory. He doesn’t want to sit, because he’s not sure he’ll be able to cope with that, so instead he just stands utterly still until he feels he’s ready to control his limbs again.

He walks out. The desk attendant gives him a not. People call him “Champion.” 

It’s too much. The world is suddenly alive with color, with sound. The people suddenly feel real. He can’t stay here, where he’s seen everyone say the same thing over and over, where he’s lived his life as long as he can remember a puppet to someone else.

He’s afraid. Afraid that it won’t last.

He’s afraid he’ll have to go back to the emptiness he was living before.

He can’t live here, with all these real people. So he leaves. He runs away. He heals his Pokemon, and he runs. He gets away from it all. He climbs to the top of a mountain, and he stays there. It’s peaceful.

Then a boy shows up. And Red can see it in his eyes, can see it in the mechanical way he moves, in the way he doesn’t blink. This boy is like him. Is like he was. The boy defeats him, and Red says nothing, because he knows the boy won’t hear him anyways. The boy leaves.

A boy shows up. Red knows this boy, he saw him before. He’s got a different team this time, but he defeats Red again anyways.

And the boy shows up again, and again, and again. And Red can see it in him. This boy is not in control of his own life. Red wonders when it started, if his freedom meant this boy’s imprisonment. And he wonders who’s behind it all. And he wonders if it will ever end. 


End file.
